


Skin Hunger

by harpling



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Established Relationship, M/M, Post-The Reichenbach Fall, Sad Sherlock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-11
Updated: 2013-12-14
Packaged: 2018-01-04 09:33:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1079382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/harpling/pseuds/harpling
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Skin hunger - the craving for human contact, an aching need to be touched</p><p>Sherlock misses John so much that it physically hurts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Separate

**Author's Note:**

> I promise this is not about zombies, cannibalism, or any other kind of horror.

Sherlock tries to relax into the thin pillow and closes his eyes, the better to focus on what his other senses are telling him. The mattress is hard and just as thin as the pillow, the sheet faintly scratchy. Cigarette smoke still discernible in the air, along with the faint scents of bodies, food, laundry powder, hints of incense. But mostly there is the feeling of John, lying on the thin mattress beside him.

His face is turned into Sherlock’s shoulder and can’t be seen, but the varying pressure against clavicle and humerous are easily read: John’s face is relaxed, peaceful even. One hand is draped bonelessly across Sherlock’s chest, little finger occasionally twitching very slightly. The length of his torso is leaning gently against Sherlock’s longer frame, radiating heat that warms far more effectively than the cheap blanket. Breath flutters against Sherlock’s neck, heat fanning out with every exhale to be replaced by a faint chill on the inhale. 

It is just a bit uncomfortable, with bones pressing into soft flesh and his arm steadily growing numb beneath the weight of John’s chest. Short hair tickles his jaw, and John’s leg is nestled just a hair’s-breadth from truly dangerous areas. Sherlock wouldn’t consider moving even if the room collapsed around them. He listens to the soft susurrus of breath, feels the steady beating of a steady heart, smells the subtle scents of a sleeping John and admits that everything is as it should be. John is next to him and all is right with the world. 

Of course, it can’t last. 

The door slams open and one of the chain-smoking Eastern Europeans staying in the bunks next to his shouts something in their unintelligible language. _“Hey, bidcho! Dzavidet! Modi ak, ki?”_

Ah, Kartvellians then. The man in the upper bunk slurs back drunkenly and attempts to throw an empty liquor bottle at his companion, missing quite spectacularly. Muttered cursing from both parties before the door closes again, shutting out the sounds of the out-of-tune guitar and drug-fueled political theory discussion from the lobby below. This hostel is grimy, crowded, and poorly maintained, but no one here notices anyone else’s doings, making it the perfect place to hide for a few days. 

Sherlock rolls to his side. John is gone. John was never here. John is precisely where he belongs, safely back in Baker Street, as he has been for the past eleven months. John thinks Sherlock is dead. 

Sometimes, Sherlock wonders whether this venture wouldn’t have been easier if he and John had never solidified that intangible something between them, if they’d never acted on the vague pull both of them pretended not to feel for so long. If he’d never allowed himself to grow accustomed to everything John had to give. 

It isn’t even the sexual aspect of their relationship that he misses the most. Whenever that urge gets too pressing, a hand on himself in the shower takes care of things for a while. Sherlock misses the quieter, calmer parts of their physical relationship. 

All the casual contact as they moved about the flat or looked at crime scenes together. All the evenings spent pressed so closely together pretending to watch whatever John was watching. All the absent-minded kisses in passing, just because he could. All the nights spent listening to John breathe and watching him sleep. 

Before John, Sherlock had never needed physical affection or even noticed its absence in his life. Nannies and tutors never touched him, Mycroft certainly would never stoop to such undignified behaviour, and there had never been anyone even remotely classified as a romantic liaison before. Then came John, and Sherlock now desperately missed something he’d never even wanted.

His skin tingles where he remembers John’s hands on him. His palms twitch faintly with the memory of warm skin under them. His arms ache for lack of holding anything significant. His lips are chapped from constant, unconscious licking. His diaphragm and upper abdominal region develop a faint, illogical pain any time he thought of John, of holding him and breathing in his scent again. None of it makes any sense, but there it is. 

Psychologists call it Skin Hunger, a term he’d always thought needlessly fanciful. Now, he realises that it perfectly describes what he is feeling. His skin is _hungry_ for the touch of John’s. 

With a sigh, Sherlock closes his eyes and tries to conjure up the feeling of John again. John likes to press close behind him when they are on their sides like this. Sherlock is careful always to lie on his right side, to spare John the pressure on his bad shoulder. Now, he can feel John again. 

One arm is wrapped over Sherlock’s waist, hand resting over his navel. The other is tucked between them, fingers curled against Sherlock’s scapular. John’s shorter legs are fitted in beneath Sherlock’s, one knee just barely nudging between his own. Breath fans the back of his neck, lifting and tickling the hair there. John always breathes better on his side, anyway. 

Very carefully, Sherlock presses his hand on John’s arm draped over his waist, feeling the steady thrum of the pulse in his wrist. He has to move carefully so as not to wake John, who still hasn’t entirely got over his sleeping habits from med school and the army. The blanket is tugged gently up and over both of them, keeping them warmer together. Finally, with the sound of John’s breath in his ear and the soft pulsing beneath his thumb keeping time, Sherlock drifts off, held securely in John’s embrace.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I must confess that this first part is based on personal experience. I was overseas and apart from my husband for a very long time, and I used to dream like this. It was very sad, but we're back together now. Yay!
> 
> In case you're wondering, Kartvellians are people from the Republic of Georgia. The one guy tells the other, "Hey, man! Let's go! Come here, yeah?!"


	2. Together

John can’t sleep. He’s exhausted, worn out like a rag wrung and hung to dry. But he can’t let himself sleep. If he does, Sherlock might be gone again when he wakes. Just like always. 

Every night has been the same, every night since watching Sherlock fall. His therapist says he never processed his grief properly and got closure; John decided he didn’t want to process or get closure if it meant losing the last bit of Sherlock he had left. And so, every night, John sees a dead man in his dreams. He feels the warmth of Sherlock’s skin against his own, hears the soft sounds of Sherlock’s breath huffing against his shoulder, smells the faint scents of soap and shampoo and skin so familiar as to be almost undetectable. It feels right; it feels like home, and he is forever grateful to his subconscious for allowing him that small moment of peace. Until he wakes up to a cold, empty bed, with only the faint scent of Sherlock on the pillow, fading a little more every day. 

Every night brings peace; every morning reopens all the barely-closed wounds again. 

Except John is awake now and Sherlock is here, stretched out on the other side of the bed, all that pale skin on unconscious display as he sleeps. He looks solid and real, but then he always does. Every detail etched in sharp relief, almost precisely the way John remembers from three years ago before… before the fall. Almost. This Sherlock is a bit different to the Sherlock he sees every night in his dreams, and John seizes on those differences, clinging to each minute variation the way a drowning man clings to a life rope. 

He’s a bit thinner, ribs showing a bit more prominently along the length of his torso. Violet smudges under his eyes speak to many recent sleepless nights. New scars litter pale skin of his back, glinting in stark relief in the moonlight.  
John’s knuckles are sore from punching that pale face, even thinner than the last time he saw it, three years ago. His lips feel bruised from the desperate kisses he’d traded back and forth with those perfect lips, now split from the force of John’s fist. Various bits and pieces of his body are aching and raw in ways he hasn’t felt since that last, awful night before Sherlock jumped and died and was gone forever. Before he showed up again out of the blue and begged to be allowed to explain. 

They say people can’t feel pain in dreams. They say that if there is actual pain, it’s proof that it’s not a dream. They have obviously never been inside the dreams of Dr John H. Watson. 

How many times has he dreamt this exact scenario? He’s felt the warmth of a body in the bed next to him, hip and thigh and shoulder pressed next to his own. He’s watched the slow rhythm of breath moving the ribs and fluttering hotly across his own skin. He has heard and smelled and even tasted the form of his lover conjured by a subconscious clearly determined to drive John round the bend. It always hurts worse when he wakes to the empty bed, the cold sheets beside him. 

So John stays awake. He watches and waits, afraid to blink. 

It’s odd, this, with their positions reversed. Sherlock, king of midnight violin concerts and 3 am explosive experiments, slumbering like a thing dead. John, firm believer in the importance of sleep, lying awake at half four in the morning, unwilling to close his eyes.

He’s not even sure that Sherlock would welcome his advances now. After all, the man had never been especially physical prior to … well, his death. Even this evening, he had seemed hesitant, as if unsure of what to do and whether it was reven allowed. Maybe things had happened while he’d been away. Maybe he’d be a completely different person now. 

With a soft sigh, Sherlock rolls over, flinging one arm over John’s belly and settling closer into the warmth at his side. There’s that settled, at least subconsciously. The morning will bring what it brings, and John will face whatever it brings. Just at the moment, though, Sherlock is breathing softly and evenly against his shoulder and shows no sign of stopping any time soon. John smooths a hand over the wild curls tickling his throat and settles in to keep his vigil.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy ending! I figured I'd better finish this before Series 3 came out and proved my head-canon wrong. I hope you like it. Thank you to everyone for reading and commenting and kudos-ing and bookmarking and being happy!


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